


Stained Glass

by babybrotherdean



Series: Stained Glass [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Dark, Dean in Hell, Gen, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Pedophilia, Post-Hell Dean Winchester, Self-Destruction, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhappy Ending, read the notes for more warnings.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-22 22:27:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8303482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybrotherdean/pseuds/babybrotherdean
Summary: Dean isn't broken, really, just stained. Tainted at his very core in the way he looks at kids and sees everything he shouldn't want.He wishes that someone would shatter him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **Please read this for more information about the warnings and tags.**
> 
> I'm going to be very blunt about this: Dean is a pedophile. He suffers from pedophilic disorder, and he is attracted to prepubescent children. That's what this story is about.
> 
> What you will not find here are scenes involving underage sex or Dean going after kids. At no point does he touch a child, and at no point does he act upon the feelings he has. The Mature rating is for a couple briefly sexual scenes, but they take place between Dean and women who are well above the age of consent.
> 
> This not a happy story, and it is not a story about sex. It's a story about Dean having a disorder and struggling with how it affects his life. I wasn't sure how best to outline this in my tags, so I hope this description was enough. Thank you in advance if you decide to continue, and I understand if you don't. <3

It’s always the kid cases that fuck with him the worst.

Unfortunately, Dean Winchester just so happens to have a terrible relationship with Lady Luck, and monsters always seem to like children more than they like adults. Easy prey, maybe (always a thought that makes Dean sick to his stomach for more reasons than one), or tastier, more tender flesh, but whatever the justification, it results in a whole lot of hunts that end with Sam and Dean stuck taking care of a couple scared and possibly hurt kids who are, more often than not, missing their parents and desperately seeking comfort and reassurance from trusted adults. “Trusted adults” are typically what Sam and Dean become after killing the monster and mounting the rescue in the first place, and it’s just-

It’s just that Dean really sorely wishes that wasn’t the case.

The little girl’s name is Rosie, this time, and as soon as the wendigo hits the ground, going out in a screaming mess of flame, she’s running straight for Dean, arms outstretched and tears in her big, blue eyes. She’s eight years old and she’s been missing for two days, the dirt and scrapes on her skin making it clear she’s had a rough time of it, too. She’s the only survivor of this case in a lair littered with bodies and the youngest person to be taken throughout it all, and Dean…

Dean catches her when she runs into his arms, but he’s already fighting panic, eyes a little desperate as they shift around the dark cavern they’re in to find his brother. Takes two steps towards where Sam’s inspecting what little remains of the monster’s body and quickly hands the kid over, rubbing his hands on his jeans once they’re free.

“You get her out of here, I’ll light the sucker up,” he says, pretending like there’s no strain in his voice or confusion in Sam’s eyes. Rosie’s curled up in Sam’s arms now but she looks back at Dean, just as lost and maybe a little hurt, and Dean has to physically turn away, shoving down guilt and disgust and other, warmer feelings that he doesn’t want to name in favour of dealing with the wendigo’s remains and the corpses of the other victims. This sort of work is usually pretty good at rearranging his thoughts.

He waits until he hears the dirt-softened sound of Sam’s footsteps while he walks away, murmuring soothing words to the little girl whose life they’ve just saved, before he closes his eyes tight and breathes out something slow and unsteady.

Dean remembers how Rosie’s hands had felt on his arm for that fractional moment when he’d held her, all tiny-soft-warm, and the messy little pigtails she’d worn that were loose and soot-dirty after being kept here. He remembers how small she’d felt cradled against his chest, and how her quick little heartbeat had felt beating under her skin, and he wonders briefly what it would feel like to light himself on fire instead of the bodies scattered around him.

Most days, Dean Winchester hates himself just for existing the way that he does, but it’s the days that the job forces him to come into contact with children that manage to make it so much worse. It’s not the first time he’s considered ending his shameful excuse of a life, and he knows from experience that it won’t be the last, either. Never is.

(Not until the day comes that he actually works up the nerve to go through with it.)

 

* * *

 

It’s not that Dean has ever wanted to feel the way he does. He wakes up every morning wishing that he could claw it out from under his skin and goes to sleep every night praying that he’ll be fixed when he next opens his eyes. Every single day, though, it’s the same fucking thing; he steers clear of children and his own sick thoughts because there’s something wrong with his head and he hates himself for the way it twists his view of the world.

It started with Sam. Back when he was still Sammy; eleven years old and forever clinging to a childish softness. Even wise beyond his years and exposed to the horrors that linger in the shadows, he was so obviously a child, and it- it fucked with Dean. Really fucked with him when he was just starting to understand what his dick was for and this beautiful fucking _kid_ was always within arm’s reach, all big eyes and pink lips and shy smiles. Always too tactile; too eager to climb up into Dean’s lap or curl close against his chest to fall asleep at night. Too soft and too pretty and too small.

It had hurt them both pretty bad when Dean got colder and started pushing him away, but he knows, in hindsight, that it was the right decision. Can’t fucking trust himself to even be in the same room with Sam for too long; no way he’s going to keep them sharing a bed. It’d been easy enough to play the older brother card, the one where Sam was just dragging him down and annoying him, and as deep as it cut to see the confusion and honest hurt in Sam’s eyes, it was worth it. It was worth being the asshole to keep his little brother safe.

It started with Sam, and for a little while, Dean thought that maybe it was _just_ Sam. Thought that maybe one too many years and a dozen too many dirty motels had pushed them too close together and messed up Dean’s head, messed him up enough to be in love with his little brother, but- but there are other kids, too.

It’s always got to be kids.

It’s Sam’s classmates, usually, when Dean swings by the middle school to collect him at the end of the day. Boys and girls with excited laughter and scraped knees and big smiles, every single one of them so wide-eyed and trusting like he could just-

-except that’s always when he stops himself short and punches the dashboard hard enough to break skin.

So it’s not just Sammy that sets him off, is what he learns. Not just his little brother that’s got him a little too hot and a little too bothered, sitting elbow-deep in too many teenage hormones and no outlet in sight; it’s just- it’s just _kids_.

Can’t really decide whether that’s better or worse, in the end, because being fucked in the head doesn’t speak well either way. Still has him wanting to tear off his own skin and dig whatever’s wrong with him out of his body until he can maybe try to be normal again. _Again_ , he figures, ‘cause it didn’t really start until he started wanting things. Until he started waking up with a tent in his pants and half-remembered dreams involving soft, young bodies and the taste of bile in the back of his throat.

Maybe he was always fucked up, though. Just didn’t notice ‘til Sammy was old enough for his dick to take an interest.

That’s the thing about Sammy, though, is that Dean doesn’t think about him like that for very long. Watches the way he grows between eleven and thirteen and listens to his baby brother’s voice fighting to drop a couple octaves and catches him with his first few embarrassing body hairs and tries to keep up with his massive growth spurts, and it just kind of…

Stops.

One day, Dean wakes up and looks at the kid, all puberty-long and pimple-faced and gangly and awkward, and he suddenly doesn’t seem very much like a kid anymore at all. Not the kind of kid he used to be, anyways. Doesn’t seem like the type who Dean wants to look at a little too close and a little too long. For the first time in a few years, Dean looks at Sammy and just sees his dorky little brother, and thinks maybe he could cry with relief.

Except that he makes the mistake of settling into the hope that he’s all fixed, too. Thinks that maybe his head got itself sorted out overnight and he’d be able to look at a girl his age and feel something, but.

He drops his brother off at school that morning and can’t tear his eyes away from some fourth-grader in too-tiny shorts and he just about breaks right there.

He’s never going to get better. He knows it the same way he knows that his mother is dead and that monsters are real, like some universal truth that sits heavy and hard in the pit of his stomach.

It’s always going to be kids, and there’s not a thing in the universe that he can do about it.

 

* * *

 

“What’s the matter, honey? Feeling a little shy?”

Not that he doesn’t try his damnedest.

Madeline-but-call-me-Maddie is a beautiful woman. Dean knows that. Must be ten or fifteen years older than him, he thinks, but she’s all natural-blonde and quick wit and a centrefold body that should have any teenage boy drooling. She’s out of her shirt and she’s on top of him, legs spread all pretty over his thighs and hands petting down his chest like she’s going to eat him alive, right here in her own bed in what passes for a downtown district in this week’s small town, but Dean’s-

Dean’s not really on the same page, in body or mind.

And fuck; it’s _humiliating_. He wakes up every fucking morning with a hard-on but there’s this gorgeous older woman ready to ride his dick and he can’t even get enough blood flowing to give her something to fuck herself on. And God; Dean’s got his eyes locked on her body like he isn’t shoving tears back down his throat because this should _do something_ for him. Round, perky breasts that are all but spilling out of a lacy black bra, flat stomach, cute little skirt that looks like it’s more suited for a little girl-

Maddie laughs and ducks down to give him a little nip at the base of his throat, and Dean really sorely wishes that she’d bite a little higher and a little harder and just kill him right here. Wishes a fucking werewolf took him home to put an end to his misery. “That’s a good boy.”

The fingers that curl around his dick are long and manicured and experienced, but when Dean squeezes his eyes shut, it’s not hard to pretend that they’re a lot smaller and a whole lot more gentle.

She fucks him right there while Dean thinks about the taste of his own handgun, and he ends up drinking himself to sleep that night.

It’s not the first time.

 

* * *

 

He used to go after girls his own age, too. Figured maybe he could be like every other guy at school and get excited about sleeping with the head cheerleader.

Her name is Casey and she was head-over-heels by the time Dean smiled at her, but it doesn’t take long for him to start picking out the little things (baby-soft hands and too-tight clothes and the way she’s just this side of flat, just small enough for him to scoop up in his arms like she doesn’t weigh a damn thing). They make it hard to think about her smile or her laugh or the interests they share or how well she gets along with Sam.

Things get even harder after Dean meets her baby sister.

He doesn’t say goodbye to either of them when they leave that town in the rear-view mirror, but knee-socks and skipping rope linger in the back of his mind for the next two-hundred miles.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, you alright?” Sam always asks him when they get back to the room after a job, and Dean never really knows what to say.

They save the day. Kill the monster. Rescue the kid. That’s the part that always gets him, though, is the kid who immediately clings to him like he’s the only available stand-in for their parents. Maybe it’s the panic-fear in Dean’s eyes every time it happens that gets Sam wondering about his mental state, but it doesn’t make him any more receptive to the questioning.

“Fine,” he’ll say, gruff and without making eye contact. Focuses on patching up his own wounds and how the mattress springs squeak every time he shifts his weight and on not looking at his brother. The kid’s always been too smart for his own good, even now that he’s all grown up and decidedly no longer Dean’s type. “You want first shower?”

It’s always his go-to to end the conversation, and when he’s lucky, Sam goes with it and leaves him alone to his thoughts. Dean likes to have some time to himself to contemplate how close he is to breaking, and to try to erase this week’s kid from his mind.

Then again, Sam might be a whole lot of things, but cooperative isn’t typically one of them.

“Tommy seemed like he was gonna be alright,” he says, slow and careful the way he always sounds when he’s trying to probe something that he thinks is sensitive. Dean does his best not to tense up but it’s hard when he feels like he’s sitting on the edge of a police interrogation. “And his mom was happy to have him back.”

“Yeah.” Dean doesn’t look up even though the cut on his arm is already over-wrapped. Sam knows him too well, most days, but this is the one thing he’ll never let his brother understand. Not over his dead body. “We saved the day. Hooray.”

Maybe he sounds a little too cynical about that because Sam gets quiet until he’s suddenly stepping closer, socked feet entering Dean’s line of sight, careful and curious and Dean- Dean just wants him to stop talking. “You were kinda freaked out when he hugged you. Everything okay?”

That’s as far as Dean’s going to let this go, and he stands up abruptly, almost vibrating with the sort of energy he always fights to keep below the surface. Something too-hot and agitated that makes him think of angry bees. “I’m taking the first shower,” he says flatly, and turns towards the bathroom, bandages be damned. He’ll clean up his mess later, or run off to the bar and leave Sam to deal with it. Not like it really matters.

“Dean, hey,” Sam tries to interrupt him, but Dean doesn’t stop, getting as far as to wrench open the bathroom’s door before his brother catches his wrist, long fingers wrapping around it tight and urgent and stopping him in his tracks. “What’s wrong?”

Dean doesn’t answer, just yanking his arm free and slipping into the bathroom, door slammed shut behind him. He holds his breath while Sam lingers, but it doesn’t take long before he hears a defeated sigh and the sound of the television turning on to match the creak of the couch’s springs. Dean leans against the old wood for a long moment before sliding down until his ass hits the tile, eyes squeezed shut and leaving the thought of a shower on the back-burner for now.

Sam can’t know, and Dean will gladly take this secret to his grave before he lets his brother find out just what kind of freak he is. He’s the only one Dean’s got left.

 

* * *

 

 _“Take care of Sammy,”_ Dean’s dad used to tell him every day before he left on a job, and in hindsight, he thinks he hates the man a little bit for it. Thinks that out of every single person in this God-forsaken world, he’s the last one who should’ve ever been trusted with the care and safety of his little brother.

He’s never hurt Sam. Not once, and some days, that feels like it’s almost worthy of a little pride, but- but there’s nothing to be proud of in doing the bare minimum to be a decent human being. Besides, it never stopped him from looking; staring too long when little Sammy came out of the bathroom all shower-fresh and rosy-cheeked. Never kept him from his own thoughts, either, ‘cause he’s lost count of how many dreams have featured skinny legs and knobby knees and bubble-gum lips. Can’t begin to hope to remember every time he’s woken up with sticky-wet boxers over the thought of precious little Sammy on his knees.

Lost count of how many mornings sent him running to the bathroom like a pregnant woman, too. Just because his unconscious can cling to those thoughts through the night doesn’t mean the rest of him will ever be able to stomach them.

But his dad, he- John always trusted him. Left a gun in his hands as soon as he was big enough to hold it and put him in charge of keeping the both of them safe, and Dean doesn’t know why. Can’t comprehend for a moment how he could’ve made such a massive error as to leave Dean alone with someone so soft and trusting and vulnerable when Dean was more a threat to his safety than any monster under the bed ever could have been.

Not that John ever saw that. John only ever saw his perfect little soldier, ready to follow every order and obey every command without question or hesitation. Back then, Dean had figured that maybe if he did as he was told and managed to make something out of his worthless, disgusting existence, then he could make up for what he was. Maybe he could correct the mistake of being born by doing something that would make his life a little bit worthwhile, no matter how sick he might be on the inside.

Still, it’s hard. Real hard to forgive his dad for putting Sammy in so much danger. Dean wonders how it is, to have a kid and put them on the line like that, whether you realize it or not- doesn’t even think to compare it to the danger they live every single day, chasing the demon that killed his mother- and he- he realizes something.

Dean’s never really put a whole lot of stock in his future, between his constant thoughts of suicide and the day-to-day horrors he faces for a living, but he’s nineteen years old the day he realizes that he will never, ever allow himself to be a father. Even if the planets align and one day he’s allowed to walk away from the living Hell that being a hunter has made his life, there is no circumstance under which he will ever willingly expose a child to his own fucked up existence.

Growing up next to Sam was torture enough. Even now that he’s too old and too tall and too mature to be of interest, Dean still doesn’t really trust himself around his little brother. But worse, still, is the thought of having his own child- a kid who depends on him entirely and trusts him without question, and who wouldn’t be able to fight back or say no or-

Though something deep inside Dean aches at the thought of fatherhood, he will never subject a child to that kind of risk. He’ll never put a tiny, vulnerable life on the line like that. Not the way that John did, whether he’ll ever realize it or not.

Dean knows exactly the threat he poses, so it’s his responsibility to keep himself away. It’s not like anyone else will do the job for him.

 

* * *

 

Dean’s gotten real good with his hands. His tongue, too. His lips. He’s learned a lot to make up for everything he can’t make himself do when there’s a pretty girl in his bed. They don’t always take it well when he can’t work himself up to an erection- think maybe they’re not quite pretty _enough_ , or that he’s got some kind of medical issue, and man, they don’t have a fucking clue- but he’s good at keeping them happy and distracted. Not a girl he’s met who won’t gladly let him eat her out or finger her through a few orgasms, and the whole time she’s moaning and gasping and trying to get a grip in his hair, Dean’s praying.

It’s got to fix him, sooner or later. He’s still waiting for the encounter that’ll kick him back into working form and make his body realize that grown women are where his interests should lie; he should crave their attention and their touch and their bodies. Every single time just feels more like he’s going through the motions, though; a practiced performance that always ends in the same result: a happy partner and Dean hating himself for thinking of someone smaller and softer.

They like him anyways, though. Especially when he’s young, older women snatch him up at the drop of a hat, and- and there’s just some kind of twisted irony in that fact that Dean finds appealing. It’s only fitting for someone who is so entirely wired as a predator to know how it feels to be another person’s prey.

He thinks that maybe it makes his feelings a little easier to ignore, but then, Dean’s always been very good at lying to himself about these sorts of things.

It’s always so much easier to pretend.

 

* * *

 

Laura is in tears as Sam hands over her little daughter, the four of them at the edge of some lake at the edge of town and shiver-wet with the wind that blasts around them, and Dean’s trying very hard not to draw any attention to himself.

“Oh my god, I can’t- I can’t thank you two enough,” she manages to get out, and Sophie- the little girl they’ve just fished out of the water after she’d been lured there by an especially malicious nymph- is clinging to her like a little koala bear, still trembling in her soaked little dress. Dean’s eyes are firmly on his shoes and he’s fighting not to bolt for the car. “I don’t know what I’d have… thank you so, so much.”

“It’s what we do.” Sam’s the one who responds for the both of him; must sense that Dean doesn’t have it in him to produce any words right now. Figures he can pass it off as cold-shock. “We’re just glad she’s safe. The monster won’t be hurting any more kids, either.”

She laughs, a little watery in the sound, and Dean takes a careful, slow breath. “That’s good to hear.”

He’s waiting for the moment when she looks at him and actually _sees_.

It’s beyond frustrating that no one sees what he is. It’s terrifying, in fact; on the outside, he’s any other person instead of showing the twisted fuck-up that lives in his head. Laura thinks he’s a hero, and he figures there hasn’t been a single second that she’s stopped to wonder about whether or not he looked at Sophie’s soaked-through clothes for a few heartbeats too long.

He wishes she would. He always hopes that parents will see him for the monster that he is; that one day, someone will snatch their child away and scream at him until their throat is raw. That they’ll deal out the sort of punishment that he’s deserved ever since he first looked at his little brother and saw something he wanted. That they’ll end his pathetic life and leave the world a better place for everyone, but.

But it doesn’t happen.

He gets a teary smile and a tight hug that squishes Sophie between his chest and Laura’s, and he counts the heartbeats he spends with such a young girl pressed so tight against his body, and he goes to bed that night hating himself a little bit more and ignoring the concern in Sam’s eyes.

He just wishes that someone would _see_.

 

* * *

 

Dean thinks that maybe the reason he fits in so well and feels so comfortable at the Green River County Detention Centre is because there are no children here at all.

None that he runs into, anyways. He figures there might be a handful of kids who come by to see their parents while they’re locked up waiting for a trial, but the visitation centre is far enough from his cell and the canteen that it doesn’t matter. For the first time in a long time, he doesn’t feel like he’s walking on spun-glass eggshells trying not to break anything or cut his feet, and it’s like he’s able to breathe right for the first time in a decade.

Except that he knows he shouldn’t be relaxed, really. He knows this is exactly the kind of place that can and will gladly end his life because of the way his brain works. He’s heard enough stories to know that he’s precisely the kind of guy who ends up dead in the showers because half the other inmates have kids at home and even thieves and murderers stay away from children.

(Dean happens to be a thief and a murderer, by trade, but he figures he’s worse than every single one of these guys. No one with any scrap of decency looks at a ten-year-old and feels more than he has for any woman he’s ever met.)

They’re here for a job, but part of Dean wants to stay. Maybe he’s better off clinging to these sorts of ranks instead of playing hero with his little brother; if he’s lucky they’ll give him the death sentence for the murder he didn’t commit and the world will wake up a safer, cleaner place. No jury would hesitate to convict him if he laid out exactly the kinds of fantasies he keeps locked away in his mind. His spank-bank is a prosecutor’s jackpot, no matter what he’s being charged with and how distant the connection may be.

But- well, Dean and his luck. Always the same dance with that tricky bitch.

 

* * *

 

Another monster, another kid to rescue. Another encounter to slip away from until Dean’s brain goes too far down the path of every thought that landed him in the deepest, darkest circle of Hell. It’s a rawhead, same monster that that ended up restarting Dean’s heart and first sent him knocking at death’s door a few years back, and it’s already got him good and shaken. Hard to forget a hunt that goes so far sideways.

Sam manages to take the thing down without getting himself electrocuted which leaves Dean to untie the kid where she’s been left in the corner of the old basement. It’s sloppy rope-work, to say the least, and even in the dark, it’s not long before he’s got her freed and she’s clinging to him before he even gets the dirty, makeshift gag out of her mouth.

She makes a sound that’s a lot like a whimper and a lot too much for Dean to handle while she’s clinging to him like this, so he gets up stiffly without letting her go and turns to his brother, ready to go through their usual routine until he can find some space to breathe air that doesn’t smell little-girl soft.

But Sam is.

Sam just looks at him for a moment, brow furrowed ever-so-slightly, and then his face smooths out all at once and he turns back to the monster’s massive body.

“I’ve got this,” he says too casually, and Dean tenses up. Listens to the little girl- Jenny; her name’s Jenny- sniffling against his chest and feels his heart stutter. “You get her out and make sure she’s okay, yeah?”

Dean’s speechless for about six seconds before he walks the rest of the way over to his brother, circles around to Sam’s front, and forcibly pries Jenny off of himself. She looks scared and there’s a sad, wounded look in her eyes for the fraction of a second Dean looks at her, but then he tears his attention away because it’s already too much to handle. Sam’s obviously taken aback when he gets an armful of distressed kid and Dean doesn’t so much as look him in the eye before he turns away. “I’ve got it. Go.”

He heads over to the duffle he’d brought along in the stunned silence that he leaves in his wake, only Jenny’s sniffling and hurt little whimpers breaking through it. Dean’s digging for the accelerant and his lighter by the time he hears Sam’s footsteps leaving, dull echoes against concrete walls as he makes his way up the stairs, and that’s too damn long for how fast Dean’s heart is beating where it sits right at the back of his throat.

Sam doesn’t do these sorts of things without a motive, and he’s always very deliberate about his actions. There was a calculation in his eyes when he told Dean to deal with Jenny, and Dean swallows hard around something that tastes a lot like terror.

Sam doesn’t know. He can’t know; not about this. Never this. He’s supposed to be Sam’s role model and his hero; his untouchable big brother who always knows best and protects him from everything bad in the world. Whether that’s true or not, Dean can’t breathe around the thought of Sam finding out just how untrue those things are. Just how rotten Dean really is at his core.

Dean won’t let him.

 

* * *

 

He used to take his time with them, when he was in Hell.

It took Dean thirty years to pick up the knife, but suddenly it was like- it was a little bit like justice. As much as he deserved every second of torture he endured at Alastair’s hand, there had been something immensely satisfying about being presented with others like him- others who looked at children too long, who hungered and coveted and dreamed. The others, though- the others were _weaker._ The others were the ones who landed themselves in Hell not because of a demon deal, but because of wandering hands and child abductions. Because they put their own sick desires over the lives of _children_ , and because they were not as determined to control themselves as Dean has always been.

Under Dean’s knife, slicing away bits and pieces until they scream and cry and beg, they are his repentance for being born wrong. Taking them apart is how he makes up for his own sins, and until an angel had seen fit to drag him, kicking and screaming, right back to Earth, he’d almost been content.

It would’ve been an appropriate way to spend his eternity.

 

* * *

 

They hand Jenny over to the authorities and slip away with the practiced ease that always gets them out of police-sticky situations, and the ride back to the motel is dead silent. Dean doesn’t so much as look at his brother when they get out of the car, and he’s wondering about the pros and cons of drinking himself into a stupor at some local dive tonight, digging through his bag for a shirt that isn’t blood-and-grime dirty, when Sam finally decides to confront him.

“What’s up with you?” he asks, and Dean doesn’t look at him, but starts searching a little faster. It seems like every shirt he owns is suddenly either dirty or missing, and it’s really impeding his attempts to escape. “You could’ve taken the kid. I was fine with cleaning up.”

“You cleaned up last time,” Dean replies because it’s the first thing to pop into his head. He can’t remember the last hunt worth a damn and there’s a fifty-fifty chance that he’s wrong, but it doesn’t seem to matter right now. “And maybe I just wanted some belated revenge. Sue me.”

That gets Sam quiet for a minute, and Dean knows it's a low blow; the faith healer is a sore spot for the both of them and he’s got a sneaking suspicion that his brother still feels guilty for it. Might not be sorry for what he did because they’ve both got a real twisted sense of right and wrong, but neither of them are proud of the human lives they’ve taken over the years, intentionally or otherwise. “It’s not just this time, though. You’re always… weird around kids.”

Shit.

Dean goes tense in the shoulders and tries to coach himself through a regular breathing pattern. “Am not.”

“You are, too.” Sam’s moving closer now and the room’s already tiny enough as it is, but suddenly there’s six and a half feet of little brother crowding into Dean’s space and try as he might to bury himself in his duffle bag, it’s impossible to ignore Sam when they’re breathing the same oxygen. “Every time we save a kid, you get all… weird about it.”

“Maybe I just don’t like kids.”

Sam snorts out a laugh and Dean hates it. “We both know that’s not true.”

It hurts in a way that it isn’t supposed to, and Dean tries not to let it show on his face. He finally gives up on finding a shirt because it’s a half-assed distraction more than anything else and he stands up straight, arms across his chest and kind of hating the growth spurt that left Sam four inches taller than him. It’s hard to look up at his little brother and not feel like he’s the one in the wrong. “Then what’s the issue, Sam? You don’t want to deal with the kids?”

“I don’t care about dealing with the kids, Dean.” Sam keeps trying to catch his eye but Dean’s staring resolutely at the second-top button on his brother’s shirt. There’s a tiny loose thread there that suggests it’ll try to escape sometime soon, and he makes a mental note to keep an eye on it. They don’t have a lot of money to throw at new clothing. “I just want to know what’s up with you. What’s going on?”

Dean’s trembling, he realizes, because he feels an awful lot like a cornered animal and Sam isn’t giving him enough space to breathe. His brother’s onto his fucked up little secret and the kid’s too smart for it to evade his understanding much longer, now that he’s caught its scent. Sam’s going to figure it out, and he’ll connect all the rest of the dots, too, and he’ll realize exactly how much of a sick fuck his big brother has always been-

He’s been quiet too long, ‘cause when Sam speaks again he sounds less demanding and more tentative. “Dean? Are you-”

“What do you want me to say, Sam?” Dean cuts him off, and he finally manages to look up and catch Sam’s eyes and he reads the confusion and concern that sit there and he just. Keeps talking. Drops his arms to his sides and thinks that maybe part of him has snapped under the pressure of holding onto this for so long and doesn’t have it in him right then to care. “You want me to say that I don’t trust myself around those kids? That I can’t spend five seconds alone with them without feeling like a predator because of how they look to me? That the time it takes me to shove them at you is enough to give me wet dreams for a week?”

He’s shaking harder now and he has to blink a few times to fight off the tears trying to well up in his eyes. Sam already looks shell-shocked, mouth opening and closing repeatedly like he wants to say something, but doesn’t even know where to begin.

Dean’s not quite finished, though, and. He just. He can’t speak above a whisper, raw and painful when the word claws its way up out of his throat.

“You want me to tell you that I’m a dirty fucking pedophile, Sam?”

He’s never allowed himself to so much as think it, in the past. Kept the word buried deep in his subconscious because- because naming this makes it real. No matter how fucking clear it’s always been just exactly what kind of twisted fuck he is, saying it out loud to the most important person in his life makes it a thousand times heavier and a thousand times worse.

He’s a pedophile. He’s the horror story on the news that has parents locking their doors and windows and holding their child’s hand when they walk home from school. He’s the dirty word that civilians whisper to each other when a kid gets hurt, and he’s the one who doesn’t get to live out his life sentence because everyone on the face of the Earth would be happier if he was dead.

Labels can be freeing, sometimes, but this one makes Dean want to throw up or kill himself or both.

Sam’s still staring at him, lips parted, a thousand emotions flashing through his eyes. Confusion-denial-anger-disbelief-fear, and that’s- there it is. There’s what Dean’s been scared of for most of his life, because this is the end of them. This is when he needs to pack his bags and find a hole in which to bury himself, because his baby brother doesn’t want a damn thing to do with him anymore.

When Sam finally speaks, it’s even quieter than Dean had managed. Just a breath of a question, really. A pleading sort of sound in it, and he- he swallows hard before he asks.

“Have… have you ever…?”

And he doesn’t even seem to have it in him to finish the question out loud but it’s written all over his face and Dean thinks suddenly that he doesn’t want to keep trying anymore. Not like this.

He turns away again because the stains on the carpet are marginally less nauseating than the look on his brother’s face, and for a long few seconds, he can’t speak. Can’t force a single word to his lips because he’s flying; floating on a sort of suspended sense of awe and acceptance.

Sam thinks he could hurt a kid. Sam thinks he’s got it in him to…

Sam knows what’s wrong with him now and Sam has always had a sense for these sorts of things.

“No,” Dean whispers anyways, and fuck; he’s crying now. A couple tears slip free and his hands are curled into tight fists at his sides, trying to keep himself from shaking apart at the seams. “Fuck, Sam, I- God. No.”

And what else is there to say? They stand in silence for several seconds too long and Dean’s chest feels too tight. He can’t breathe here, with Sam’s eyes heavy and judging and _knowing_ just resting on him like they’ve got nothing else to see, in this cramped little motel room that suddenly feels a whole lot smaller, and he needs to- he needs to leave.

He doesn’t say a word to his brother as he starts moving again; grabs a shirt without looking at it and changes out of the dirty one he’s got on. He’s already wearing his boots and his keys are in his pocket and his phone is- he doesn’t care about his phone, really, ‘cause he’d rather no one ever speak to him again after this, but it’s jammed in the back of his jeans, anyways. And Sam doesn’t speak up, not once, not until Dean’s already opening the door, ready to go find himself a bar to drown in and an excuse to cry himself to sleep in someone else’s bed.

“Are you coming back?”

He sounds young and little-kid scared and Dean can’t do this.

He doesn’t reply, stepping out into what’s turned into light rain and shutting the door behind him. Sam doesn’t follow, and Dean’s left on his own in the parking lot, moving towards his four-wheeled salvation and trying to remember where the bar is relative to their motel.

He’s sure there are women here who’ll offer to take him home. Men, too. He isn’t feeling picky.

Tonight, he just needs to forget.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a lovely day. <3


End file.
